Earlier this year, my parents and husband suggested that it was a good time to take the kids for their first visit to Disneyland. The timing seemed good – both boys were tall enough to go on most of the rides, we all needed some warm weather and sunshine and my older son’s birthday was coming up.

But I initially resisted the idea of going on only a few weeks’ notice. I wanted to push it off until the fall so I had more time to plan. I had done a case study on Disney in the past, and the thing that stuck with me was the fact that a Disney vacation was something that people planned well in advance and there was a lot of advice to be had out there about how to maximize the experience. I knew that there were guidebooks and software programs and chat rooms and iPhone apps all dedicated to planning out a Disney vacation with military precision. The thought of having to do that level of planning in such a short amount of time made me feel a bit panicked.

And then, when I Googled “lazy parents’ guide to Disneyland” and got exactly ZERO hits, I knew I was screwed.

Everyone thought I was being ridiculous, and in some way, I knew I was too, but I couldn’t figure out why I was so resistant.

Until it finally dawned on me that I was putting myself under far too much pressure to give my kids THE MOST PERFECT DISNEY EXPERIENCE. Like this was my only shot at getting it right, and if I fell short on any single part of the trip, I would ruin their childhood.

Okay, simmer down there, crazy lady.

The truth is, if I told my kids we were taking a special trip to one of the bridges in the river valley, they’d be excited. We could take a plane ride to anywhere and it would blow their minds. This didn’t need to be our one and only Disney trip, we didn’t have to reach some mythical level of perfection, we just wanted to have a few days of fun.

So with some much appreciated help from my parents, the trip was planned and all I had to do was make sure I could get the time off work. I did end up getting a guidebook at the last minute that helped explain some of the finer details, but by the time I started reading it, I was already on the plane.

The truth is, the reason there’s no “Lazy Parents’ Guide to Disneyland” is that the whole experience is so easy. Get up, get dressed, go on rides, eat when you’re hungry, be prepared to stand in line sometimes, head back to the hotel when you’re tired. Done.

If you asked me, I could give you half a dozen tips to make the most out of a trip to Disneyland, but I realized that “getting the most out of it” wasn’t the point. It was about spending time as a family, creating memories, having a blast.

Last week, someone close to me critiqued this wee blog of mine and it bothered me much more than was probably warranted.

It’s been days, and it’s still stinging. Part of me wants to just pack it in – forget this foray into blogging. That’s the perfectionist/defeatist part of me. If my writing can’t be perfect on every note, then why bother creating at all? If I’m going to get well-intentioned wrist slaps every time I take a misstep here, then perhaps it’s just not worth it.

Welcome to my psyche, folks!

This blog is frightening for me. I like to think that I’m pretty good at the whole “writing” thing, but I mostly restrict myself to 140 characters for the meagre extent of my “personal” writing. These longer posts allow me to mull things over in more words, but they also afford more opportunity to screw up, sound dumb, make bad arguments, insult people or come across as whiny, pedantic, unoriginal or (horrors of horrors!) just plain boring.

But NOT writing isn’t going to make my writing better.

And maybe I should give myself permission to screw up. Maybe it’s those missteps – as a blogger, employee, friend, daughter, wife and mother – that keep me from being the worst thing of all: